Amaya Toman In mid-October 2005, Tim Cook was promoted to the position of chief operating officer of Apple. Cook has been with the company since 1998, and his career has been rising quietly and slowly, but surely. At that time, he was "only" six years away from the position of director of the company, but in 2005, only a few thought about such a future.
"Tim and I have been working together for over seven years now, and I look forward to becoming even closer collaborators to help Apple achieve its great goals in the years ahead," said then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs in his official statement relating to Cook's promotion.
Before being promoted to COO, Cook worked at Apple as vice president of worldwide sales and operations. He received this position in 2002, until then he served as vice president for operations. Before starting his career at Apple, Cook gained work experience at Compaq and Intelligent Electronics. Cook initially focused his work primarily on operations and logistics, and seemed to enjoy the job: "You want to run it like a dairy," he described years later. "If you get past the expiration date, you have a problem".
Cook allegedly sometimes did not take napkins to both suppliers and people who worked under his leadership. However, he was able to earn respect and thanks to his rational approach to solving various problems, he eventually gained quite a lot of popularity among the others. When he became COO, he was given responsibility for all of Apple's global sales, among other things. At the company, he went on to lead the Macintosh division and, in conjunction with Jobs and other high-ranking executives, was to be involved in "leading Apple's overall business."
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Along with how not only Cook's responsibilities increased, but also how his merits increased, he slowly began to be speculated as a possible successor to Steve Jobs. The promotion itself to the position of chief operating officer was not surprising to many insiders - Cook had worked with Jobs for many years and enjoyed great respect from him. Cook was not the only candidate for the future CEO of Apple, but many underestimated him in many ways. Many people thought that Scott Forstall would replace Jobs in his position. Jobs ultimately chose Cook as his successor. He appreciated his negotiation skills, as well as his dedication to Apple and his obsession with achieving goals that many other companies thought were unattainable.
